


Past Saving

by vl19scriptfic



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel
Genre: Gen, THE UPDATED VERSION, am i over 4.05? no, and then decides a week later that she's gonna edit the work she already posted, as of november 2nd, because i'm an Awful goblin writer who can't decide where to ends scenes for the life of her, in my typical fashion of ouch, includes bahrain discussions, tell my WIPs i love them, the fic devils are gonna come for me i know it, will i ever be? no
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-26
Updated: 2016-10-26
Packaged: 2018-08-27 05:58:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8389861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vl19scriptfic/pseuds/vl19scriptfic
Summary: Daisy's last-ditch attempt to blow up the Watchdog headquarters nearly ended with her dying in the process. May and Coulson reached her in time and pulled her out. Now May's on the quinjet with Daisy, and she knows all too well the likelihood that Daisy will be out of her reach again the moment the Zephyr's wheels touch the ground. Words aren't her strongest suit, but she has to try.





	

**Author's Note:**

> special thanks to marvelthismarvelthat for reading this right after i impulsively wrote it at 1:30 in the morning (and then for reading the second half of it that i tacked onto the ending of an already existing chapter like some sort of heathen)

“Why did you do that?” Daisy wheezed, panting, bracing her hands against her knees. Her ribs were on fire; every breath hurt. It was only half because of the fractures. 

May holstered her pistol in one swift fluid motion. She made it look like ballet. Some things never changed. 

“Do what?” 

“Pull me out of there,” Daisy answered, trying and failing to bite any of the bitterness out of her voice. 

“Do you really want me to answer that?” May said, not meeting Daisy’s eyes. “Or do you just want to punish yourself more by asking?” 

“That Watchdog base would have been history. I had it under control. You should have just-“

“Should have what?” May interrupted. Now she was meeting Daisy’s eyes. Now she couldn’t tear herself away; the point of no return was behind her. “Left you to blow yourself up along with the base? Let you die?” 

Daisy’s jaw tightened as the pain in her ribs flared. “Would have taken care of their leader.” 

“We’ll find another way.” 

“You had it. You had the win, May, you should have taken it.” 

“It’s not worth a win if you die. If you die, Daisy, that is not a win. That is-“ May bit her lip. She could stand inside her own mind and beg her emotions to come to a ceasefire all she wanted. It was futile. 

It wouldn’t be a win. It would be the crack of pistols and the shouts of armed men and the weight of a dead young girl in May’s arms again. It would be the walls she’d shut herself up in after Bahrain had run its claws through her. Something would come for her again if Daisy died, something nameless and familiar and hungry. It would come for her, and she couldn’t promise she wouldn’t let it. 

“God, why do you- why do you keep doing this?” Daisy stood, nearly laughing at herself as she spoke, tilting her head up to hide the rim of tears in her eyes. May saw.

Daisy’s voice was rising to a trembling shout. “Why do you all keep running after me? Saving me? Why the hell won’t you just give up?” 

('Give up') 

The sting of the sound remained, preserved in the barely-audible ring of the metal pipes and walls around them. Daisy’s pain sang even after her voice faltered. 

“Because we love you,” May said. It was so quiet; it was the loudest quiet she knew how to be. 

“Well you shouldn’t!” Daisy nearly shouted. Her voice splintered. Her eyes burned. “You shouldn’t love me, May, none of you should! I’m-“

Something snapped, and May stood. “You’re what? Unlovable? Unforgivable? Beyond saving? Because you’ve done something so horrible, so awful, that you deserve to die?” 

The first tear fell down Daisy’s cheek as though it were exhausted from holding on so long. 

“Is that what you think Bahrain did to me?” May asked, only just breaching a whisper. She pressed the words out of her lungs before she could breathe them back in, before she could let herself drop the subject. “Put me past saving?” 

May’s words had hit their mark. Daisy’s shoulders dropped, and she slid down against the wall of the quinjet in a joyless reunion with gravity. 

“No. No, May…. God, no.” 

May didn’t even breathe. She couldn’t, because she was afraid if she took even a single breath, she’d shatter. 

“Did you think you were?” 

May looked up. Daisy’s eyes were fixed on her. The bruises across the younger girl’s cheeks were dark and angry and unforgiving. Looking at her, May saw her old self turned inside out; she saw her own reflection the day she’d woken up with Bahrain standing over her shoulder. Her own nightmare made material again. The same claw marks on someone else. How the hell did this happen? 

This May- the May sitting across from the girl she’d come to love like a daughter- was healed. The scars were there, but the wounds had closed. This May was long beyond the self-destructive isolation and the blisters and calluses along her fingers from long nights spent at the target range without gloves. This May, the one Bahrain couldn’t break, was a miracle, and she couldn’t help but answer Daisy’s question honestly. Because miracles take a goddamn long time to happen. 

“Yes,” May said; she thought that maybe this was the beginning of something. She hoped it was. “Yes, I did.”

The air buzzed with the absence of speech. In truth, May had expected Daisy to say something, anything- something about how it was different, about how May couldn’t possibly understand- but instead she was met with the collapsed gaze of someone who had stared into the same abyss she had. Through a different window, perhaps, but now was not the time to compare scars. 

Daisy’s drooping frame looked so small against the stark metal wall of the jet that May felt a bursting urge to rush towards her and take hold of her hand. But all she could manage was a single step forward, and when Daisy didn’t shrink away, hope burned inside May’s throat. 

“Can I sit?” May asked. Daisy answered with a minute nod, and May slipped into the comfortably wide space next to her. The bitter cold of the metal wall stung against the back of her neck. 

They sat at opposite ends of a thread stretched across a canyon, and May felt it tugging at her. This was something incalculably huge at stake. This was infinite air between them; this was months of pain and worry condensed down into a single moment that could stretch on forever. This was where things would fall back together, or where they’d break for good. These days one bore nearly perfect resemblance to the other. 

"I'm so tired, May," Daisy whispered, and infinity simply ended. 

As though she couldn't for one more second bear the weight she carried, Daisy collapsed wearily against May, bowing her head to her former mentor's shoulder. May held her there, not letting herself shrink away; instead she wrapped her arms around Daisy's shoulders and turned away from the muted alarms that rang still in her mind. She'd chance the loss. She'd brave the full impact of the pain she knew she'd feel if anything ever happened to Daisy. Because Daisy was more important than any of that.

"I don't know what to do," Daisy said softly, and May could hear the tears in her voice even before she felt them fall against her collar. "I don't know what to do. I just want it to be over." 

How could it be that May couldn't rely on her strength for this? How was it that she couldn't simply fight all of the sadness and guilt out of Daisy? How was it that everything she'd spent so long training for was so useless in this moment? 

"I know," May said gently, her own voice sounding foreign to her, so soft yet so full of barely checked emotion and every manageable ounce of genuinity. She wished her younger self could hear her now. "I know it feels impossible. But you can beat this. It's gonna be a part of you forever, but you can beat it." 

"How?" Daisy's voice was tiny, barely audible over the drone of the quinjet engine. 

"You hold onto your people," May said, her chest tightening at the thought that there was a time she would have fought tooth and nail against her own advice. "You hold onto them and you let them help pull you out of the dark." 

She would have done it alone. May would have walked her path after Bahrain alone, shutting everyone else out, and it would have been the end of her. She couldn't let it be the end of Daisy. "When things get as bad as they are right now," May said, brushing a strand of hair back from Daisy's face, "that's the point of family. Even when you give up on yourself, they don't give up on you." 

The hour drained slowly into the next, the low rumbling engine humming along as Daisy's soft hiccuping sobs gave way to slow, rhythmic breaths. May ran a soothing hand over her arm, careful not to disturb the splaying bruises that peeked out from under the edge of her bandages. 

It was the first time in longer than May could remember that she'd held onto someone for this long. Even more time than she'd spent sitting on the floor of that awful warehouse with that little girl's body in her arms. She'd come so far, and she'd still be back there if it wasn't for Daisy. The wayward hacker they'd run into on a mission all those years ago had saved her; Coulson and Fitz and Jemma and Daisy had all joined hands and pulled her out of the dark, even as she'd fought so hard to push them away. Bravery was a complicated thing, but Daisy was a part of hers. And now she had to be braver than ever, because Daisy needed her to be. 

"Thank you," May whispered, although she knew Daisy was fast asleep and couldn't hear a thing. "For not giving up on me."


End file.
